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Oh my god, this is one helluva a Light Novel. An ending right at the first book. I think I'll bury myself in the text (CHINESE TRANSLATIONS ARE COMPLETE YAY) for a couple of days... Just need to skip food, water and sleep, oh yeah...

Oh my god, this is one helluva a Light Novel. An ending right at the first book. I think I'll bury myself in the text (CHINESE TRANSLATIONS ARE COMPLETE YAY) for a couple of days... Just need to skip food, water and sleep, oh yeah...

Mhm. When you say the Chinese translations are complete, are you referring to the web version or the light novels? And what do you mean by 'complete', exactly? Up to date with where the light novels are? Because so are the English translations, well, except for volume 10 that came out only a few days ago.

Oh my god, this is one helluva a Light Novel. An ending right at the first book. I think I'll bury myself in the text (CHINESE TRANSLATIONS ARE COMPLETE YAY) for a couple of days... Just need to skip food, water and sleep, oh yeah...

He speculated it was either an American special forces operator - specific unit unknown - or a counterterror SWAT cop who was using GGO as a test of sorts for whether you could simulate real world skills and use them for training.

It would make rehearsing for certain ops much, much safer, though at the end of the day there's no substitute for going into a killhouse and putting rounds downrange.

I could definitely see this being used for pilot training, perhaps as a complement (rather than substitute) towards lead in fighter training. If you could get enough AmuSpheres hooked out, you could run some wicked exercises.

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~Speaking my mind, even when it costs me~One must forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.Heinrich Heine.

Also, GGO amuses me for two things: 1) The first BoB tourney was won by an American using a Modern Warfare 2 CQC build, who ran around knifing people to death and shooting them with his pistol when that wasn't practical.

2) NANOSUIT ENGAGED. That green line in the HUD that shows where incoming fire is coming from? Totally from Crysis 2. That was one of the most useful upgrades for the Nanosuit ever (though it did have the side effect of turning your HUD into a mess if you were right in the middle of a killbox, lol, hence why my playstyle was more like the Predator and less Rambo or Sam Fisher).

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~Speaking my mind, even when it costs me~One must forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.Heinrich Heine.

I think I am weird for thinking that fairy dance is an arc whose emotional content actually at times closes in and surpasses SOA high points. Indeed, Lyfa/Sughara's breakdown and Asuna's reunion felt even more powerful to me than Red Nose Reindeer.

I suspect, it is in part because volume 3 and 4 are more cohesive than volume 1 and 2. We only see snippets of the kind of healing Kirito had to go through after RNR, and while the Asuna's and Kirito romance plot in volume 1 is stirring stuff, it also feels fragmentary, since we only see a small portion of how they got from a single piece of bread bread in Aria to Chapter 16.5 and Yui and the Heartcliff fight.

I guess part of the problem is that the main volume 1 arc felt quite short, taking place in a single month. Though ALO also takes place over a shorter period of time, it might be because we really see a good chunk of Sughara's thought processes while outside Aria, much of Kirito x Asuna is from Kirito's PoV.

In any case, though Fairy Dance is indeed a rescue/imouto arc, it avoids a lot of the incestuous undertones of other similar stories but rather feels like the confused feelings of a teenager on Sughara side, while Kirito's strong feelings for Asuna intersect to create an explosively complex mix. There is a real feeling and dedication of sibling hood from their relations, a meaningful layer even beyond a potentially incestuous romance, unlike other little sister plots.

Ultimately, I'd say that there's an intersecting element of The love of friendship, family and romance when it comes to love in Kirito's mind. I think we can argue that Kirito feels alone for all his harem,but only the romantic variant of love is reserved for Asuna alone.

Another plus point for Fairy Dance: At the end of the story, Suguha and Kirito take the time to work through and come to terms with their emotional baggage. And then, at the end, Aincrad is brought back to ALO, and the ALO faction war is temporarily placed on hold as everyone joins in the Aincrad clearing party, including the SAO survivors who've returned to VRMMO gaming.

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~Speaking my mind, even when it costs me~One must forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.Heinrich Heine.

Ggo, which I'm picking through has a distinct cyberpunkish feel to it that feels more accel world than SOA. Even In the real world in plot, there's the distinct sense of being in the last days of a civilisation becoming slowly less familiar to readers even today.

I skipped ahead and completed volume 9 , and the sense of being in a world that is on the border of a thriller set in a modern world and a full blown sic fi is there.

Another plus point for Fairy Dance: At the end of the story, Suguha and Kirito take the time to work through and come to terms with their emotional baggage. And then, at the end, Aincrad is brought back to ALO, and the ALO faction war is temporarily placed on hold as everyone joins in the Aincrad clearing party, including the SAO survivors who've returned to VRMMO gaming.

Yeah, I like Fairy Dance. Especially the way Kirito is rushing to the world tree. The sense of urgency is really well written there.

Another plus point for Fairy Dance: At the end of the story, Suguha and Kirito take the time to work through and come to terms with their emotional baggage. And then, at the end, Aincrad is brought back to ALO, and the ALO faction war is temporarily placed on hold as everyone joins in the Aincrad clearing party, including the SAO survivors who've returned to VRMMO gaming.

Yeah, at times while reading ALO I kinda felt sad for Suguha knowing how deep the bond formed between Kirito and Asuna in SAO. Still I usually go and ship Lyfa with Recon anyways so it all works out in the end.

I skipped ahead from halfway, and read the end of GGO, since TVtropes spoiled me to hell. The author is seriously a genius at writing stirring emotional climaxes. Just look at Red Nose Reindeer, the end of Volume 1, the End of ALO- Volume 4, and now the end of GGO, which was as good as any of the other emotional climaxes of Sword Art online. Even Calibur had a feel good factor at the end of the story.

Huh? All of the arcs have been life-or-death situations in some sense. That's at least so for Kirito.

I wasn't referring to life-and-death in the context of risk, but rather of how the situation gave birth to the plot at that point of time.

Ultimately, SAO was a 2-year nightmare for 10,000 people, with thousands of deaths and lives forever distorted, for good & bad.

In terms of 'grand scale storytelling', it's definitely hard to top that kind of setting as well the effects/subsequent sub-plots that can be built from something like that. In fact, it's only natural to want to built the root of subsequent, more 'personal' stories from there, because SAO as a story-arc, addressed very limited pieces of individual character stories. ( well, it was pretty short )

I hate to say this, but there is definitely a degree of perception-distortion-field for the stories that occur after SAO, because in some ways, it felt as if Kirito and co. had been through much much worse, and what they're facing in successive stories 'can't compare.'

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Night~and~Gale: ~ The Final Mythology of the Man who Defied Destiny.The sleeping lion shall awaken beyond the depths of time, crossing ten billion lights, come to Terra.

In terms of 'grand scale storytelling', it's definitely hard to top that kind of setting as well the effects/subsequent sub-plots that can be built from something like that. In fact, it's only natural to want to built the root of subsequent, more 'personal' stories from there, because SAO as a story-arc, addressed very limited pieces of individual character stories. ( well, it was pretty short )

I hate to say this, but there is definitely a degree of perception-distortion-field for the stories that occur after SAO, because in some ways, it felt as if Kirito and co. had been through much much worse, and what they're facing in successive stories 'can't compare.'

I think it's a matter of perspective. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't agree; it's as you said, the Aincrad arc is difficult to beat in terms of 'grand scale story telling', but does it really have to be beaten by the other arcs for them to be more enjoyable? Continuity is an enjoyable aspect on it's own. And of course, it depends on what the reader considers 'grand scale story telling' to encompass.

And even if they've been through much worse, it doesn't necessarily mean that they'll get through their next obstacles and dilemmas scot-free, as those obstacles and dilemmas could very well be their breaking point(s).